


Rainbow Girl

by Fyre



Category: Kinky Boots (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-13
Updated: 2008-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a boy called Simon, and he wanted to be beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainbow Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Abby.   
>  Thanks to Beth for holding my hand throughout. And the one lyric quoted is from 'Damn Yankees'.
> 
> Written for Abby

 

 

1\. Violet

Vi Barclay was his first girlfriend. Not in the hair-flick, finger-snapping way Lola would say it, but it was what she was. A girl and a friend, and if his dad thought that meant something else, then Simon was happy to let him think so.

He had the boxing club, where he had to be the tough guy his dad was always looking for, but at Vi's, he could be himself.

Vi's little sister went to dancing classes. That meant make-up. 

Many happy afternoons were spent in the white-tiled bathroom, comparing bright blue eye shadow with neon pink blusher and any other number of combinations that would make a self-respecting drag Queen faint in horror.

It all ended when Simon was thirteen and her parents came home early. Vi got a hiding, and Simon was given a box around the ears and thrown out of the house. He didn't know if it was the fact he got makeup stains on her mum's black cocktail dress or the fact he looked good in it that annoyed Mrs Barclay the most.

He hid in the garden as they shouted at Vi. He could hear her crying. He listened and then he heard their punishment: no daughter of theirs could be seen with a queer black bastard from down the road.

His vision went blurry then, and he ran all the way home.

Dad was in when he got there. Dad saw him with the makeup and tears streaking his face and the bright red lipstick. Dad knew then. He knew what had started with red shoes on a pier hadn't gone away. Simon was given such a thrashing, he couldn't sit upright for five days without wincing. 

Still, there were some things that hurt more.

2\. Indigo

He didn't give up on his first girlfriend and she didn't give up on him.

Even if her parents banned them from seeing each other, they went to the same school, did the same classes and sat next to each other in most of them. 

After getting in trouble for talking one time too many, they started sliding notes back and forward across the table. From the table, it became notes in each other's bags when the other wasn't looking. Simon collected his and stored them in a shoe box.

One rainy day during the summer holidays, when Simon felt particularly daring, he wrote a letter to her in his best cursive writing. It looked lady-like and pretty, and he drew some hearts and flowers on the envelope too.

The trouble was signing it. It was a rule. Letters had to be signed. Their English teacher had made sure they knew that.

That was when he found one of his first different names.

She'd probably think it was stupid, but he was looking out the window and saw a rainbow. They had learned about prisms in science, all the colours, and he had teased her because she was in the rainbow. He wasn't, but he knew the colour that was next to violet.

He signed the letter with a flourish in bright blue ink: Indigo. Everyone knew Indigo was always next to Violet.

3\. Blue

Things didn't change much for a while, then everything did.

Simon boxed like his dad wanted. It kept him out of the house. Especially after mum died. It was easier to go and hit the punch bag down at the training room than sit at home. It wasn't fair that mum was gone and dad was left behind. If it made him a bad son, he told himself he didn't care. He punched and punched and punched the bag. He didn't care.

He didn't care when Vi moved. He didn't. Her mum and dad upped sticks and left, and even if he had her address, he didn't care. He didn't care he was being left on his own. He didn't care his best friend was going.

He didn't cry into his pillow the night after they drove away.

In the middle of the night, with his torch, he opened up the shoebox. There was a small box inside it, and he took out the small lump of lipstick he had left. His hand was shaking so much he knew he must look like a clown. The small disc of eye-shadow had barely enough for one eye too.

He pushed the box away and pulled the sheets over his head. The light from the torch made him look more like a weirdo than anything as he stared into the small, cracked mirror in his hand. He could never get the eyes right. Vi had always done that for him.

He knew dad would see the makeup on the sheets, the stains, but he really, really didn't care.

4\. Green

He started winning boxing rounds at sixteen.

That was also when he put a lock on his door and started buying dresses.

His dad never realised it was his fault. After all, he was the one who insisted Simon went to the pub with him, like a man. He was the one who pushed Simon at the pretty girl with the braids at the bar. She was the one who was wearing the strappy dress with embroidery that made Simon's stomach do flips.

She'd been pleased at first, when he spoke to her, but the pleasure had rapidly gone when she realised he was only chatting her up so he could get a good look at her frock. He'd never wanted anything so much in his life as that frock.

It wasn't like it was even his colour: dark gold with patterns of birds picked out in black.

All the same, he wanted it. 

He scoured every shop in town for it, and when he was in the bigger towns for bouts, while dad thought he was off jogging, he was trying all the shops there until he found it. It cost him all his share of his prize money from six fights, but when he got it home and put it on, and the cloth slid over his skin, he knew it was worth it.

He fell back on the bed and traced the embroidery with his hands. 

He'd never been in love before, but he would swear this was pretty close.

5\. Yellow

It was bound to happen.

Simon forgot to lock his door, and dad forgot what privacy was meant to be. It was one of the worst moments of Simon's life when he walked in the door and found the torn scraps of all his dresses scattered around the room. His father was standing in the middle of it, silent and furious.

Words fell mercilessly on unresisting ears. Queer. Faggot. Filthy. Perverted. Not my son. There might have been blows as well, but years of boxing meant he could block them, take them, while everything in his brain felt like it was closing down.

Part of Simon shrank away, closed inside the back of his mind, screaming.

Finally dad, tired of shouting and hitting and swearing, stormed out. Probably to the pub. To get drunk and forget his perverted queer of a cross-dressing faggot son. But not before he told Simon to go.

Simon sat down on the edge of the bed. He knew he wanted to cry, but he couldn't. He picked up the scraps of his gold and black dress. The bird sewn into the fabric had lost its head. It had been a starling. Now, it was just a headless bird.

Silently, he put the scraps down and went to the wardrobe, filling a bag with what he could carry.

Even if dad wasn't being serious about him going away, Simon wanted to run. Run and never look back. Maybe it was cowardly, not wanting to face the disgust and contempt in his father's eyes again, but right this second, he didn't want to do anything else.

6\. Orange

There was only one place he could have gone, really. It was like a force, pulling him in. He tried a couple of the northern cities, but there was too much to remind him of everything he had run away from.

London was his destination.

Boxing got him a foot in the door, so to speak. It got some attention, but it wasn't the kind of attention he wanted. With his pitiful savings, he shrank away from the boxing circuit. He found a bedsit and a job that let him scrape together enough to eat. At least sometimes, anyway.

He was there nearly six months before he found the bar.

He couldn't quite remember how he ended up there. Someone from work invited him. Or he had overheard someone mention it. However he had heard about it didn't matter. What mattered was that he found his way to the Black Cap in Camden.

That night was the one that changed his life.

He knew he couldn't be the only boy who liked to put on dresses. Pantomimes had men in dresses, but that had never been the same. He wanted to be beautiful and when he saw their star, he knew he wasn't alone. 

Every Tuesday, he would arrive early, and if he was lucky, be the one that Her Imperial Highness Regina Fong would choose to cast a ruby smile on. Awed, he watched her, and knew that if, no, when he could, he would follow in her fabulous footsteps.

7\. Red

It had started with amateur talent nights at the club. He had crept in with a little lipstick. The next time, he arrived with some eyeliner. When no one said anything, he continued to add little touches, little tweaks, colours, skirts.

All at once, he was being recognised, and he had an ever expanding circle of friends. Some of them were like him. Some of them were the men who liked the girls who were like he was. And some of them were girls who liked boys who were like he was.

It was a confusing and exciting new world.

He had hit the ground running and didn't have a chance to stop and catch his breath. He even found a new name.

It came about when he admitted he had never seen any of the classics, and was promptly taken to his girlfriend's flat and plopped in front of the biggest collection of 1950s musicals that he had ever seen in his life. 

Among them, he saw Damn Yankees and found himself.

Simon was carefully closed away, like a comfortable but hopelessly unfashionable dress, and Lola walked confidently in his place. She was bold, strong, confident, beautiful and everything that Simon had dreamed of when he first put on Vi's baby-pink lippie. 

She also had brains enough to gather a good team of friends and allies around her and with a little bit of help, a lot of hope, willpower of titanium, balls of steel and some of the best looking drag queens she could find, establish a place she could call home.

It took time and patience. She had both.

With a name stolen from a sinner, home was named for anything but: the Angel Club. It was a place for the best and the beautiful, and it was born out of her own blood, sweat and tears.

Invitations were sent out for the opening night, her friends and the friends of all of the other employees. After all, if a girl couldn't count on her friends for support and to make her little venture a success, who could she count on?

It was all in the preparation. Her dad used to say that before a match: if you haven't prepared, nothing can make you win. So she prepared. She worked on everything and if she sometimes had to drink to sleep, she did. If she sometimes wanted to scream, she would press a pillow over her face to do so. Stay calm and focused. It was all in the preparation.

Everything had to be perfect to make it stick, to make it last. The music had been chosen carefully, the dancers rehearsing day and night, around fittings and costume checks. Drinks were in and tables were arranged. Lola had gone through everything with her checklist. 

When the night arrived, she sat and stared at herself in the mirror. If Simon was still in there, she couldn't see him. She was Lola now, in her fabulous frock with red lips that Regina would have envied and boots that came all the way up to her thighs. 

In the hall outside her dressing room, she could hear the music and the patter of a dozen delicately-shod feet hurrying to their opening places. 

As she drew her wig on, she smiled at her reflection. "I'm irresistible, you fool," she murmured, rising from the mirror and walking out of the room. The stage was calling and as she stepped into the spotlight, she smiled at the sea of faces. 

She was where she always wanted to be. 

 


End file.
